when we arrived yesterday afternoon, the system was set to 75°, and we tried to be fancy by turning things down to 70°. instead of cooling off, it got warmer. and warmer. soon it was up to 85°. we thought we must have just warmed up the house by having the garage open to offload the moving truck and then by having the doors open to schlep stuff inside. overnight, the temps outside dipped to 65°, and I opened the windows in the bedroom and set a table fan in the window to keep myself cool. but when we woke up, it was still over 80 in the house.
t sent me an email last night suggesting that we check the air filter. this morning, heeding his advice, we took the filter out of the return and found it was completely clogged with dust. which is to be expected, since t has been gone for over two months and that's the average life of an air filter. next we tried running the system filter-free for an hour - it should have flowed freely without anything in the return to inhibit air movement - to no avail. so it's not a filter problem. we also checked the condenser, which was moving fine and responding to commands from the thermostat (on/off). so it's not an electrical problem.
should be opaque, but should be as white as the framing. dark grey = several months of dust. gross.
we went to lowes and got a new filter anyway; even if it wasn't the source of the problem, the old one was gross. while we were there we spoke with an employee who seemed to know a good deal about hvac. he suggested we go up in the attic (sir, it is HOT outside. you really want me up in the attic?) to check out the air handler. he said the coils could be iced over, or there could be a secondary filter in the handler unit that needs replacing. so up into the attic I went, after battling the fold-down steps (t, come home! I'm too short to reach them without a step stool! seriously though). the steps won and now I have this sweet gash on my right shoulder:
WAHHHHH
the air handler unit is fully enclosed (unlike the one my parents have), so we couldn't look at the coils, but a nice woman on the tech support line of a local hvac company told us that if it were frozen, there would be frost on the outside of the unit. neither frost nor condensation = no frozen coils. so not an overload problem. and since the unit is fully enclosed, that means there's no secondary filter to blame. mystery. we let the system sit, turned off, for over two hours, just in case it was frozen. but when we turned it back on the air that was blowing (and I'm using "blowing" liberally here, there is very little flow) was very warm and the temperature immediately shot up to 84° from 82° - indicating that the air isn't being cooled and we were just recirculating attic-heated hot air.
feeling hot hot hot
the only remaining possible problem is that the freon needs to be recharged, which apparently can happen in systems that work really hard because they are in really hot places (like middle georgia). that, or the freon needs to be replaced because there's a leak somewhere. the hvac company we called can't come out to the house until monday morning, but it's fine. we will be ok to sleep tonight with all the windows open and fans going, and tomorrow we're off to savannah to see the sights before mama catches a plane home to new england.
thank you baby jesus for ceiling fans. even with the house at 84°, it's still almost twenty degrees cooler inside than out, and the air movement that comes from the fans is helping tremendously.
is it weird that I'm contemplating spending the second night in my new home sleeping on the floor of the living room?
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